GVWR

GVWR is a term used in Australia and the United States. It stands for Gross Vehicle Weight Rating and refers to the maximum operating weight of a vehicle inclusive of the chassis (internal framework of the vehicle), body, engine, fluids, passengers and cargo.

Fahrenheit to Celcius

First, some qualitative comments on both scales.

The Fahrenheit scale is used in the US to measure temperature, one of the fundamental factors affecting human comfort. It was first proposed by Daniel Fahrenheit in 1724, who was of German origin but lived most of his life in the Dutch republic. He was a glassblower by trade but had an interest in the natural sciences, in which he conducted many experiments.

The Celcius scale, formerly known as Centigrade pre 1948, is named after Swedish astronomer Anders Celcius. The names Celcius and Centigrade are unrelated, one is a person's name, the other is a derived word.

Now for the important bit. How to convert from F to C?

Minus 32 and multiply by 5/9.

Minneapolis

Minneapolis, "City of Lakes", is the largest city in the State of Minnesota,  America's most Northerly state, with the exception of Alaska. It was the home of Dakota Sioux before the French arrived in 1680. "Minne" means water in the Dakota Sioux language. It borders Ontario, Canada.

Shaolin Five Animals

Dragon
Tiger
Leopard ("Paau") - requires development of power and speed for swift, penetrating strikes

Fractional Dimensions

Just as we talk of two-dimensional space and three-dimensional space in Geometry and Linear Algebra, there are also fractional dimensions. This is part of a subject known as continuous geometry, introduced by John von Neumann. In "CG" dimensions come from the internal [0,1] rather than from a discrete set of integers. 

Range of Courses at IITs

Certain courses, such as mechanical engineering and computer engineeing are taught universally across all the IIT campuses.

IIT Guwahati offer Mathematics and Computer Science at BTech level, Delhi at MTech level.  IIT Kharagpur is strong for biotechnology.

IIT Kharagpur - The First of the IITs

The first Indian Institute of Technology was IIT Kharagpur, founded in 1951, at which Nehru gave the first convocation address in 1956.

He called it "India's future in the making". It was declared an Institute of National Importance by the Indian Institute of Technology (Kharagpur) Act.

Kharagpur is in West Bengal, in the Eastern part of India (state capital Calcutta, or Kolkata).

The second IIT to be founded was IIT Bombay in 1958. Campuses were scattered throughout India to prevent regional imbalance.

Entrance to IITs is by Joint Entrance Exam (JEE). Exams must be taken in:

• Physics
• Chemistry
• Mathematics 

plus an additional aptitude test for Architecture candidates (where knowledge of famous monuments and their architects is tested).

In mathematics, some of the more tricky or unusual requirements include the following.

e.g. knowledge of harmonic series. In the harmonic series, each term is inverse of a term in an arithmetic progression. e.g. 1,2,3,4,5.. becomes 1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5.  Each term of the harmonic series is the harmonic mean of neighbouring terms (2(x1)(x2) / (x1+x2)).

Also analytic geometry skills must be extremely good. e.g. do you know the equation of a circle? For a circle with centre (a,b) the easiest way is to think of it in terms of its "standard form" (x-a)^2 + (y-b)^2 = r^2. The equation x^2 + y^2 = 1 is the unit circle centre (0,0).

In chemistry, some of the basic concepts you will need include kinetic theory of gases (the idea of gases as collections of atoms and molecules moving randomly in space).

Physical chemistry topics are required (where we apply physics to chemistry), covering how matter behaves at the molecular and atomic level, and explaining how reactions occur. John Dalton's premise that all matter is composed of atoms is assumed.